Global Coalition Submits Open Letter to UN Calling for Human Biosystems Protection as Missing Foundation of Environmental Law
PRESS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: LONDON, 31 MARCH 2026
50+ signatories from science, business, systems, finance and communities across 10+ countries call on the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to a Healthy Environment to recognise human beings as biological systems requiring protection
It is time to protect people like we protect the environment
A growing international coalition today submitted an open letter to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to a Clean, Healthy and Sustainable Environment, calling for Human Biosystems Protection to be recognised as an integrated and foundational element of environmental law and planning frameworks.
The #ProtectHumanBiosystems submission, backed by 50+ signatories from science, business, systems, finance and communities across 10+ countries, argues that current environmental planning frameworks, however well designed, will fail to deliver the right to a healthy environment without one critical missing lens: the protection of human beings as biological systems.
The coalition includes bioscience researchers and clinicians across every continent, responsible investment and business leaders including ShareAction, RePattern, Dark Matters Lab, Business for Health and Business on Purpose, along with systems and policy design leaders, purpose-led business leaders, community organisations and advocates.
Our interconnected biological systems: immune, neurological, vascular, energy, are under cumulative threat from repeated infections and other environmental impacts.
However, like climate change, prevention is no longer enough.
Human Biosystems Protection is our adaptation and investment strategy: connecting human and planetary health as the missing foundation of workforce and economic sustainability.
The Evidence
We present mounting global evidence that human biosystems are now destabilising at population level: UK healthy life expectancy has fallen to its lowest level since records began, whilst Sweden has lost 7.1 healthy life years since 2019, and Germany has recorded 80-100x under-reporting of SARSCOV2 infections.
The World Economic Forum Global Risks Report identifies pandemics as an ongoing threat, exacerbated by conflict-related outbreaks, rising misinformation and health funding cuts, yet current risk frameworks still do not account for cumulative biosystems damage, because the data systems designed to measure population health were never built to see it.
Over 400 million people globally are measurably affected by post-acute infection syndromes (PAIS) today, with no formal clinical training or treatment pathways in place to address them. Research evidence links repeated infections to accelerated cellular senescence (premature aging at the cellular level), early neurological changes that track with dementia biomarkers, and immune dysfunction that mirrors the cumulative damage seen in HIV. This is deeply costly to our economies and workforces globally. The annual economic cost has reached £85 billion to UK employers alone and $1 trillion in the United States. Rather than adapting to this new biological reality, our current health, work, social and benefits systems further biological and systemic harms, pushing the severely impacted into poverty and preventable deaths.
However, those most severely affected are just the tip of the iceberg, with millions more experiencing early warning signs: new symptoms, old conditions reactivating and unexplained health instability - all of which are largely invisible to the frameworks designed to protect us.
Our letter calls for Human Biosystems Protection to be integrated as a foundational element of the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment, connecting to emerging systems health, policy and design, including the exposome, planetary boundaries, wellbeing economy, the UN SDGs and the UN Roadmap for Eradicating Poverty Beyond Growth.
Quotes
Cat Fraser, Founder and CEO, CSI Ecosystem and Founder, Lab of Lived Experience:
"We are working to save the planet whilst watching human biosystems collapse around us. Protecting one requires protecting the other, therefore this submission asks the UN to close that gap and to mobilise business and finance to act."
Tina Woods, Founder and CEO, Business for Health:
"More and more evidence from exposome science is showing how closely human and planetary science are interconnected and must be protected in the interest of humanity and global prosperity."
James Vaccaro, CEO, RePattern Regenerative Systems and Finance:
"This initiative highlights an addressable system issue that must be tackled with urgency to prevent it spiralling in magnitude and consequential impacts."
Dr Asad Khan, Consultant Respiratory Physician, Long COVID and ME/CFS Researcher and Advocate with Lived Experience:
"We have never had so many people sick and disabled at once. We risk losing a generation if we do not act now. COVID-19 appears to be causing an alarming rise in the incidence of new and existing illnesses including heart attacks, stroke, dementia, Parkinson's disease and diabetes. With the world wanting to move on, there is a real risk that the issues of personal, community and environmental health are being left behind."
About the Campaign
The #ProtectHumanBiosystems campaign is coordinated by CSI Ecosystem. The open letter, press release and full signatory list are available at protecthumanbiosystems.world.
Media Contact
Cat Fraser
protecthumanbiosystems.world
cat@csi-ecosystem.com
csi-ecosystem.com
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